I have GV, and I use it daily. I use it to make toll calls to friends nd relatives who don't have a cell with my carrier. I look them up, hit "call," and my phone rings, and their phone rings. That's really about all I use it for right now.

Expansion will be the real deal - I'm in development to market a pshychometric eval instrument to fortune 500 types, and I will come to be in a place where I must be reachable to some people. I can give them my GV number, and it will ring any number of lines I ask it to, while tracking me down. It will also id each caller, and allow me to block some guys right to voicemail. Then it will push the message to me. I see this as a very valuable tool, and am very surprised it's free.

Poly, the $250 deal is something called Ooma. i bought it last month and my number gets ported on Tuesday according to the email i received. i'll go from paying AT&T $62/month for local and long distance to $0. i pay Ooma $0/month. in < 5 months the Ooma will have paid for itself. (i am going to subscribe the premium service in Ooma, which is about $12/month after my free 3 months of it are over . . . but it isn't necessary by any stretch).

i did have to buy a 50' phone cable to run from the Ooma, which gets its phone connection from my cable modem, to the phone box on the outside of my house to replace the AT&T phone cable that comes from outside. this way, all phones and fax machines, etc. in my house work using the Ooma instead of AT&T.

regarding the 911 issue . . . you'd have to check in your area if the E911 service is available. i think it's pretty standard now in north America. Ooma has it. when i signed up i had to provide the specific address for the number i was registering. when we call 9-1-1 then the address automatically goes to the 911 center as our call arrives. i put off shifting to Ooma (or any VOIP) until i felt like the 911 issue was resolved since it had some problems many years ago. we have our iPhones to make 911 calls as well when we're home and most babysitters we hire have cell phones as well these days. i also have the Ooma attached to a APS battery backup solution in case the electricity goes out.

but back to the original topic . . . (EDIT: and i see macbeemer said much of this now that i completely read the thread) i have Google Voice. i give the number out and have done so for many months now. i typically have calls ring both my iPhone and home phone. if i am home then i'll take it on that phone to avoid wasting cell minutes (same thing if i am at work). my wife calls her mom once or twice a week in Illinois. instead of using the home phone to make the call, we have Google Voice call her mom for us. you click a call button in Google Voice and then select her mom. it asks which phone you'll be talking on. we select our home phone and hit call. immediately, our home phone rings. we answer it and then immediately my wife's mom's phone rings. they can talk all they want and Google pays for the long distance call and nothing appears on our bill. of course, we when switch to Ooma this coming week then i am not sure Google Voice will get as much use. but i do like to use Google Voice when i give online tests to my students. with 70+ students i tend to get a few calls at once. i asks students to enunciate well and leave a message. the message is transcribed and i see it immediately. this saves me time during the test because i can call the student back with the answer right away and also have a record of everything that was problematic to review the next time i give a test.

i did have to buy a 50' phone cable to run from the Ooma, which gets its phone connection from my cable modem, to the phone box on the outside of my house to replace the AT&T phone cable that comes from outside. this way, all phones and fax machines, etc. in my house work using the Ooma instead of AT&T.

All you had to do was disconnect the incoming line at the box outside, then run a short phone line to any jack in the house from the Ooma. That's the way all VOIPs are set up that I've done.

Reboot, my Ooma is in my office in the basement right up against a storage room. i have a hole in the wall next to Ooma and was going to run cable through into unfinished storage room (through unfinished ceiling) and out the far side to side of house where AT&T box is. the 50' cable wasn't going to be exposed or unsightly.

One thing I like Google voice for which I haven't seen mentioned is FREE UNLIMITED TEXTING.

Also like you mentioned, I use it for long distance calling since my parents live in PA and we live in MD.

I hear soon you can port your existing phone numbers to GV, which will be a boon. I've really only given out my google number to a few folks for texting and long distance reasons, but when you can port your number I'll port our home number because I like the privacy features GV offers.

Funny, Ooma features looks just like GV features, except GV is "in the cloud".

The only thing I don't like about a service like Ooma is our internet is wireless, we connect to a gateway radio up on a silo near us, which then connects to a tower a few miles away. If the power goes out, so does the phone then. Yeah, we still have cell phones sure.

i have no complaints about Ooma. like any internet based service, if your internet goes down then you're SOL and that happened last week for 2 days. but we still had 2 cell phones and we barely use our home number -- it's mainly for the kids when we have a babysitter (e.g., 911).

Google Voice still needs a physical phone with it's own service (e.g., home phone; cell phone) to transfer the call to work, doesn't it? i mean, if you transfer your home number to GV then your home phone system will no longer ring when the Google Voice call comes in. you can probably answer on your computer, but not on your home phones. or, you could answer on your cell phone. i suppose for a lot of people that is all they need. i really like Google Voice for what it offers for free and how well it works (even though not perfect transcriptions on voicemails).

Yeah, your home phone will still ring if you transfer that number to google voice, as GV is simply sending the signal to a node on the network.

I'm thinking more along the lines of all the extras in the "premium" ooma service that costs an extra $10 a month, if you've got google voice they seem to be a waste to pay for. Also, voicemail to text with ooma is another $10 a month on top of that charge. About the only thing GV doesn't offer you is an extra line to dial out.

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